240 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



naturally wish to have a portrait truly represent its principal, 

 but it is not of the nature for caricature not in the least! 

 It is a strong, resolute, intellectual face with chin and nose 

 and forehead very much comme il faut. All the trouble is 

 that the sensitized plate happened to catch such a strong 

 impression of brain and jaw, as emanations from these 

 weighty organs impinged upon it, that no sufficient room was 

 left for the depiction of certain delicate traits which would 

 have imparted the natural and proper flavor of Gemuthlich- 

 keit. 



I wish I could send you photographs of my own personality. 

 I haven't had any in my possession for something like 30 

 years, and I am too much in the dumps at the present moment 

 to think of being "taken." 



I have been reading the new H. C. G. with no small amount 

 of satisfaction and am now more than ever anxious to see a 

 new edition of H. C. F., with which volume as it happens I 

 am personally in much closer sympathy than with the one now 

 in hand. Not that I don't love this one, but that I love the 

 other more. 



Mentally, I care but little for gardening or horticulture. 

 For farming, on the contrary, I am keen. Unlike yourself, 

 I have never been much attracted by botany, or morphology 

 or by vegetable physiology (as she is taught), all of which 

 is very wrong of me and base as I well know. But when 

 you get upon topics where chemistry can be "applied," you 

 may be sure of one attentive auditor. I am much struck in 

 the new vol. by your loyalty to high science so to say. And 

 therein you are wise. You hold yourself and your reader 

 well up above any low or "temporary" point of view. Most 

 of us, perhaps, are only too ready to talk down towards the 

 level of the "practical man," and in all probability little or 

 nothing is gained by our doing so. 



Of course there are a dozen things I would like to talk with 

 you about. For example ' ' avenine. ' ' Manifestly the French- 



